nothing tells me a store is not "better than a pawn shop" than a store called "better than a pawn shop."

so that's why i take my possessions to the "plain talk pawn shoppe," where no one tries to call an ass a horse.

things have been going well, although i'm finding myself getting homesick more often than i frankly feel comfortable about. sometimes, i wish my girlfriends, my childhood friends, hell, my family and neighbors would all move to my grand rapids neighborhood, so i could be all, "hey, gramma, let's go to marie catribs and get some french peasant tarts" and she'd be like, "girl, you know i prefer wolfgangs," and laughter ensues, ROLL CREDITS.

at first, i used the word "bitch," just now, as in, "bitch, you know i prefer wolfgang's," and i read it and it actually hurt my eyes to think about my grandmother using that word. my eyes are bleeding right now just from the sacrilege i almost committed.

i'm at work right now, obviously in gross violation of company policy that prohibits personal use of the information superhighway. hopefully, i'll get out in time to get to founders for potato moon tonight, where i can see the familiar (and missed!) faces of peter, erin and fatty. maybe their faces will be nice and drunk! i hope so! it's saturday night after all. i'm figuring i can afford to get in what with the cover charge because i sold my rare jade collection today at the motherf&*cking pawn shop.

dutch tongue

tulips. tulips. tulips. before january of 2005, when i moved here, i liked tulips and could gaze at them blankly and let my mind wander to thoughts of simple things like pollination and springtime renewal and maybe that joke about roses on my piano and tulips on my organ.

now, tulips conjure up a sort of choked up panicky feeling deep in the recesses of my belly and my heart races and i get all blushy on my chest and cheeks. this is not "spring fever." this is "tulip time adversion." in fact, i'm getting the feeling right now even thinking about thinking about the feeling.

oh my god the tulips have broken ground they are blooming i am missing some component of the coverage of this annual event of springtime renewal the press is going to have some amazing story about a new kind of bulb that is going to blow other tulips in the world away and i'm missing it tulip time tulip time tulip time!!!!!! (head explodes).

i have used up all of my clever flower reference reserves for snappy leads. i'm going to go hide in the storage closet until may 14. until then, have a happy tulip time.

eat this haiku

walter's barber shop
is full of smoking racists
but the price is low

that is my tribute to walter's barber shop, a downriver institution. i used to run by it in high school almost every day in the spring for rowing practice, and it really was full of smoking racists (for variety, you could also substitute "sexists" for "racists." misogynists would be even more fitting, but we've got to stick to the haiku format here, you dopes).

it was a good weekend with a shoehorn itinerary. on friday, aaron, patrick, maddy and i went to the south division gallery walk. about 10 minutes into our first stop, the power went out. and stayed out. ran into christina and kevin in someone's darkened apartment which was slightly surreal. had dinner at the pita house in east town with aaron.

on saturday, we broke the fast at catribs, then made our krispie treats, went to the children's museum, the park, amy and scott's, played "robots" with emmett and maddy and ordered PPV walk the line.

woke up on emmett's couch with patrick, went to breakfast/target with amy, hung out in reuben and melissa's backyard, caught lilly the st. bernard (awkward) ate pizza (delicious), went to billy's for 80s night/bridie's birthday.

happy 26th, bridie

the weather is lovely. i'm feeling bouyant.

a $25,000 painting later, i'm really in the hole

in fact i'm so in the hole now that i no longer have money to pay for electricity to look at my new painting. but i know it's there, smiling down on me as i type this, cast in the pale blue light of my dell laptop. i'm going to mangiamo's tomorrow for brunch to celebrate the new purchase.

well, even though this news is pushed a little ways down in my post, it should first and foremost be noted that my childhood cat, tinker, died on thursday. i was more upset about it than i imagined i would be. she was 17 years old - hardly a kitten, but she just had this sweet trusting demeanor that even the most solid cat-haters could at least tolerate.

i brought her home from school when i was in second grade - this tiny little black and white ball of fuzz with a distended belly and parasites. she was discovered in a boat with the rest of her litter and no mother in sight by a classmate of mine. tink was the runt of an already really tiny and starving litter.

she would come running when i whistled, which was a cool trick. she also freaked out when we got a dog in my senior year of high school. at one point, we had to put her on valium, which as you can imagine provided limitless anthropomorphic jokes about kitty's little helpers. she got over it though, and sophie (the dog) and tinker (the cat) became friends. in the couple of months before tinker died, when sophie would go out at night, tinker would wait for her by the door and start making those weird cat chatter sounds when sophie came back to be let in. it was a nice little system that let my father hang out in his BVDs on the couch rather than by the door after he had to get out of bed to let the damn dog out. now it's back to the door dad, sorry.

i was fortunate enough to have been home monday morning when tinker's system started to shut down. it's so weird, when i saw her on sunday, she was fine - she even jumped onto the kitchen table. when i picked her up to put her back on the floor though, she felt so light, like she was just hallowed out. on monday, she couldn't get up. she couldn't lift her head and her breathing was shallow. i had to say my goodbyes before i left to go back to grand rapids, which was really hard. i really wanted to pick her up one last time, but i was worried i would hurt her. my parents tried to keep her comfortable for a couple of days, but on wednesday they took her to the vet. she only weighed five pounds (she was formerly corpulent.) she's buried under a pine tree in our yard that used to be her favorite hangout.

so, at the risk of being a 25-year-old single woman who gets bent out of shape and writes lengthy descriptions of her cat and its death, my hat is off to you, tink. you were a great little animal and it's just not going to be the same without you.

by the way i was kidding about the painting. but i wish i could have bought it.